


The Dogs of War

by SylphOfPaperPlanes



Series: Pietro Pietro & Company [3]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Drinking, Emotional Baggage, Literally Ultimate Frisbee, Where do they get all those chessboards?, the world may never know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2068623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphOfPaperPlanes/pseuds/SylphOfPaperPlanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling into the Xavier Mansion is far different than Pietro thought, especially power training.<br/>Not to mention that his teachers seem to have issues of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dogs of War

The Professor pinched the bridge of his nose before taking a deep breath. He hated dealing with media about his school, but phone calls from the government agencies were far worse. Especially when the other end was a too-tired detective who constantly interrupted him. “No, I assure you, the Xavier Institute for Gifted Yo-”

He winced at the harsh buzz of words coming through the receiver which cut him off. “Yes, yes, I know who you are, so if you would please-” The other didn’t even seem to listen to his words, barreling with his investigation. Charles barely paid it any mind, instead doing a regular mental sweep over the school grounds. Until he heard something about Erik’s former plans to assassinate the president.

“That incident was over six months ago! Listen... I have nothing to do with that damn terrorist, no matter what rumors might be-” Cut off again by the grating voice throwing accusations. “Do you think,” he began in a slightly harsher tone, “I would ever _willingly_ associate a man who threatened a president? I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I do have a school to run. I wish you the best of luck in your investigation. Oh, and if you-” He wasn’t even interrupted this time, instead hearing the steady dial tone hum instead of a voice. These phone calls always went poorly. It was either something about mutant prejudice or Erik constantly raising hell while leaving a trail back to the school.

He absentmindedly dropped the receiver back onto its cradle before continuing to scan the school. He could find most of the students out of the building, doing practice drills in the field nearby. Mid morning dew clung to their shoes and some skipped stones into the lake nearby. Alex had quickly taken up the mantle as the trainer of students with physical powers since he had gotten back from Vietnam, being the only person both willing to do the job and having control of their legs. He might not have been the best one for the job, the war having changed him considerably and his reprimands more like snapping orders than criticism, but he did his job well nonetheless.

He was running through one of their normal activities, from what Charles could tell. It was actually rather simple; The students just had to find a way to get a frisbee in the air onto the ground using their powers.

It started off simple, with Alex throwing the disks from a stack he had at his feet and students going one by one to take it down. Charles could clearly sense the quiet bubble of excitement and nerves surrounding the task, one of the few exercises that they had full creative control in.  

Alex’s younger brother, Scott, went first, shooting it down with one swift tilt of his sunglasses. He was followed by a rather new student, Jean, who raised a hand and halted the next disk’s flight mid air, albeit shakily. The rest of the students went relatively quickly while trying to outdo one another, one of the teenagers even turning into a wolf to catch the frisbee in her mouth, until it had gotten to Ororo.

Charles could feel elation that was almost palpable in the children’s minds. While cheers for the little girl rang out from the crowd, Alex threw the disk, and she raised her hands to the air above. In almost half a second, the sky clouded over, and an arching bolt of lightning came spiraling down through the disk and connecting with the ground.

Dead silence fell over the formerly cheering crowd as all eyes rested on the small crater in the ground and the charred dirt in a vast starburst formation around it, not to mention the frisbee that was little more than a shrivel of blackened plastic in the middle of it all. Even Ororo seemed to stare at her hands in slight confusion and worry.

Alex managed to snap the children’s preoccupation and somber mood with a loud clap of his hands and a suggestion that the class break for lunch.

As the students dispersed, Charles moved on to the library, where the students who did not partake in the activity were currently studying. One of the two kids lazily flicked through flashcards, an omnilingual boy named Doug Ramsey. His mind was a bitter clutter of thoughts ranging from _“I already know this.”_ to _“Why don’t I have cool powers?”_ , and Charles dared to give him a subtle push to continue his study. _Practice makes perfect, Doug. You may have retention naturally, but recollection can always be improved._ At this, Doug rolled his eyes, but picked the pile of cards back up nonetheless.

The second student, on the other hand, was diligently reading from a history textbook. Lorna sat at the long table, completely engrossed in the chapter Charles had assigned her on the American Revolution. He hadn’t exactly known what to do with her during training sessions due to her lack of powers, so he had given her additional coursework which she had taken to quickly. He tried not to interrupt her miscellaneous thoughts, but one floated to the surface before he could move on. It was insignificant, really, a half hearted wonder where her brother was, and if he would be back before dinner.

As a matter of fact, where _was_ Pietro? Charles certainly didn’t sense him at the training session or in the library. The professor immediately began scanning the hallways and rooms for the boy. If there was one thing worse than Pietro running around, it was Pietro running around unattended.

He finally found the telltale rush of thoughts and consciousness in the kitchen, the swirling mess of mind nearly unreadable as usual. A flash of irritation, and the teen was moving again, running at the same headache-inducing speeds that he normally found himself at. He was an untrackable blur of discarded ideas while he darted through the hallways, seemingly heading towards-

“You wanna cut that out, Prof? I’m getting real sick of it.”

-Here.

“Would you care to elaborate on what ‘that’ is?” Charles asked as he shifted his hand from his temple to the desk.

“You know,” Pietro made a frenzied gesture to his head, trying to find the term. “Getting in my brain, I guess. Once every few hours, you go and poke around in everyone’s heads to make sure the school’s running alright.”

“And you can feel that?”

“Yeah...” He drew out the word, taking a rapid look around the study before instantly going through the bookshelves that lined a wall. “I just feel something so damn slow going through my head when you’re reading my mind.” He boredly dropped the genetics textbook he had at hand and gravitated towards the dusty chessboard sitting on the desk.

“Don’t touch that.” Charles said instinctively, wincing as the teen’s hand left a blurry imprint in the dust right between the two wooden armies. Though he wouldn’t admit it, that board had barely been touched since Cuba save the few times he had knocked the game over in a fit of drunken rage.

Okay, it had been more than just a few.

“I really don’t think you get it.” Pietro continued, going back to flicking through the textbook with an exasperated sigh. “Think of it this way, say you’re running in a race, well not you specifically...” Charles closed his eyes for a short moment, but knew the other was motioning to his wheelchair.

“But you’re running a race, and you know you have this and see the finish line and stuff, and someone from the crowd just reaches out and grabs your arm. Big deal right? Just someone grabbing your arm. Some people would say you already have your lead, and that it’s pointless to argue. But slowing down means that everything you work for just isn’t valid to everyone else. So what does it matter if you can run faster than everyone else if people are just going to demand you drop the one thing you work for?” The book snapped shut in his hand and Pietro seemed close to yelling in his own fast-paced way, having worked up some kind of mild anger or nerve. Maybe it was justified in the other’s mind, but he didn’t dare touch whatever hid under the silver hair after that rant.

The professor managed to take a deep breath before attempting to reason. “I do hope you understand that I have to sweep the school occasionally to make sure everything is going smoothly. For example, if I hadn’t, how would I have known that you weren’t at training today?”

“Alex gave me the day off.” The book in his hand snapped shut and hit the desk with a thud that shook even more dust off the chessboard.

Charles briefly reached out to Alex’s mind and raised an eyebrow to the boy in front of him. “No he didn’t.”

“Well he didn’t complain when I left. I walked at a normal pace and everything.”

“You can’t just skip your classes like that, Pietro.” He said while pinching the bridge of his nose. “Did you at least do your reading for Monday’s english lesson?”

“Twice. It’s not like there’s anything better to do around here. I mean, besides play chess, with all the boards around, but playing chess is just too much waiting for the other person to-”

The phone on the desk cut him off with a sharp trill of a ring, and he looked to the professor in a strange mix of impatience and amusement. Charles picked up the receiver, cradling it between his shoulder and ear. “Why hello sir, I hadn’t expected to hear back from you so soon...” After a moment of listening to the other end, he leveled a tired gaze on Pietro and took another deep breath. “I have absolutely no clue as to what you could mean by ‘Pentagon Incident’ much less any information on it.” His voice was dry and vaguely sarcastic, but not enough to be considered much more than tired by anyone unsuspecting. The teen only cracked a wide grin at this before running to grab another book from the shelf and skim through it. “I will have to call you back, yes yes, soon of course. I’m in the midst of teaching a class, if you don’t mind.” And with that, he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

He never was the best liar.

“So where were we?” Charles asked, though Pietro didn’t seem to care as much for the conversation at hand. Instead, he seemed focused on his blasted music player, fiddling with the wires of the headphones. Charles cleared his throat, and the teen briefly looked up before going back to the device. “I believe we were talking about how your two and a half weeks at this school so far haven’t been as productive as we both expected.”

This snapped him out of his focus. “I’ve done all my schoolwork, honest. Just ask Hank, I mean I got pretty good grades on the last science test, and you know I’m acing english. Again, there’s nothing better to do in this damn school besides the work. You won’t even let me go into the next town over to-”

“I’m talking about training your mutation.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t improve. I run every morning. We did the tests, I can’t break the sound barrier. There’s no improving it or ‘training’ it.” He made small air quotes on the word training, the boredom hanging heavily from his words. “There _has_ to be some better way to spend my time here besides catching disks and watching everyone else blow stuff up at their own slow paces. Speaking of, when are we going to start up some type of drama club? I know Scott has some background in theatre and I’m sure more kids would join if we opened it up.”

Charles sighed while nudging a pawn from the board carefully back into its place. “Pietro, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we have fifteen students.”

“I don’t think you recall that I was a one man drama club before I came here, Prof.”

“I was trying to forget, actually.”

“Does that mean we can start the club?” His eyes lit up in a strange mix of hope and impatience, and the professor hesitated on his next words.

“We can talk after your training session this afternoon to make up for your skipped lesson.”

  


* * *

  


Pietro looked out over the lake’s surface where water rippled with the slight wind and then back to Hank and Alex waiting beside him. “You guys are insane.”

“Not really, if you think about it.” Hank offered while taking notes on a clipboard he had at hand. “According to the tests we ran before, you should be able to hit the right speed for this pretty easily.”

He dug his bare heels into the soft grass and longingly looked to where his heavily worn sneakers sat. Even with the soles reduced to nearly nothing, it was at least comforting to have them on. “And the test before that said I would be able to run at speeds faster than sound. And we all know how wrong you were then.”

“I’m certain these figures work out.” The scientist said firmly, tapping the pen to the clipboard. “It’ll work out better than Sean’s first-” A glare from Alex caused him to cut off whatever thought he had. The teen briefly wondered who the hell Sean was, and what caused the humid afternoon air to become so thick with tension so quickly.

“Look,” The teen started, running a hand through his silver hair. “I just want to put it out there that maybe, just maybe, walking on water was Jesus’ thing. And I’m not gonna go and mess with Jesus.”

“You’re not going to walk on water.” Hank nodded to the lake. “You’re going to run on it.”

“You are the fucking worst at comforting students.” Alex snapped. “Pietro, just focus, and then you’ll do it.”

He caught his sister giving him a thumbs up and a warm smile from where she sat in the tall grass, a book clearly forgotten on her lap and a daisy chain quickly being woven in her fingertips. “Fine, but if I drown, don’t let her make any Ophelia jokes.”

“No promises.”

He took a deep breath before lowering his goggles onto his eyes. He focused on the passing storm clouds that Ororo had apparently summoned (The air still tasted like charred earth and the blissful threat of rain) kick up quiet winds that skimmed the surface of the lake. His only solace at this point was that he was too fast to sink like a rock. Hopefully.

He rolled his shoulders and crouched down, letting his fingertips brush the soft grass still wet with dew. He figured he would need the best start he could to keep this up.

And then he pushed off.

His feet flew over the little space of grass he had. Blades bent under his toes and dew brushed the hems of his pants, but he kept a solid pace. River bank mud briefly pulled at his bare feet, and then there was no ground below.

The second his foot hit the surface of the water, he felt his toes slip under, and attempted to recover. The next step sent up an unsteady spray of droplets at his foot pounded the surface and sprung off, and the next after that did the same.

He quickly gained his balance and tempo, leaving a wake behind him as he dashed along the pond. The world was a happy blur around him with beads of water suspended for split seconds around him before they crashed down to the rippling blue below. Pietro let off a cheer as he skimmed the surface, curling figure-eights out of nothing and feeling the weight of water tug at his clothes.

After a few seconds of it, he stepped back on land, coming to a full stop before Alex and Hank, both still watching the waves caused by his run.

He felt more alive than he had all week, even with icy water clinging to his hair and shirt and the breeze pulled the last of the fear from his mind. He had become breathless at some point, though it wasn’t from exhaustion. It was definitely adrenaline.

“When can I do that again?”

  


* * *

  


“So let me get this straight, ” Alex laughed. “You called yourself ‘Pietro Pietro and Company’ as a drama club? You’re one person.” He leaned back in his chair and took a careless drink from the glass in his hand, the telltale cloudy look in his eyes and lilt to his words.

Pietro nodded while he placed his nearly full bottle of beer on the table before him. It had become a kind of ritual for Alex and Hank to invite him to one of the smaller studies in the mansion to drink on fridays as he was the oldest student and the closest they could get to an intellectual peer. Every party involved conveniently forgot that he was only in high school.

Then again, he rarely ever drank much. he always had the excuse that he didn’t think he could get drunk in the first place with his power, but in truth he didn’t want to risk his mind slowing down in the fear that he’d let things slip that he’d rather keep bottled up.

“An astute observation.” He deadpanned.“The joke is that I am Pietro,” he stood and was behind Alex’s chain in a flash, “the other Pietro,” he stood beside Hank, “and the entire company.” he finished, returning to his seat from an instant trip to the kitchen with a bag of chips in hand. He leaned back into the uncomfortably soft couch where the expensive looking pattern seemed to melt around him while he burned through half the bag. “It’s like a ‘me myself and I’ thing, you know?” he managed to say around a mouthful of salt and crisp.

“I’ve never met anyone so content to be alone.” Hank said with a quiet laugh, staring down into his nearly full glass. He wasn’t quite fond of drinking either, having said that too much alcohol interfered with the serum he used. That tended to leave Alex the only one drinking, and often drinking for three.

“Besides me.” Alex finished his glass, and wordlessly took Hank’s from him. “But Peter-”

“Pietro.”

“-Pietro, if you keep up running like you did during training today, you’ll have plenty of friends to go play dress up with or whatever. People like cool mutations.”

“You really think so?” It wasn’t like people hadn’t called his mutation cool before, but it was something special to have come from someone who could _shoot fucking lasers_.

He nodded, inspecting his new drink. “Yeah, if you stop stealing people’s shit and start showing up to practices, you’ll find a new dork troupe within like a week. My brother says that if you take his glasses one more time, he _will_ find you and he _will_ kill you.”

“It’s a force of habit.” Pietro said with a shrug before crumpling the now empty bag and resting it on the table beside his forgotten drink. “And they look better on me than they do on him, anyways.”

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t look very nice with burn marks and half your hair seared off.” Hank managed to chime in before Alex punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t mind him, he’s just pissy because his little brother got laser eyes and all he got was burning hula-hoops.”

The burning hula-hooper in question narrowed his eyes slightly and gestured in the other’s direction with his drink. His smile was light and airy, and it seemed as though he barely cared about the amber liquid sloshing dangerously around in the cup. “You sound just like Sean when you say-”

“Don’t.” At the sight of Hank’s mouth pressed in a thin line and his gaze dark, it seemed like Alex lost any hint of humor in his expression.

“Who the hell is Sean? I heard you talking about him back at the lake, and I wasn’t really sure if then was really the right time to ask about-”

“And old friend.” Hank replied, still caught in what appeared to be a staring contest with the other. His jaw was set, and the vaguest hints of blue were apparent along his skin.

Alex was the one to snap first. “You can’t go trying to pretend he didn’t exist!”

“That’s rich, coming from you. You give me looks that could kill for mentioning him.” Pietro was sure if this was a conversation he should be listening in on, or even if the two of them still remembered that the teen was sitting right there. He took the safest route and pretended to be focused on another old chessboard, nudging the pieces around in the dust.

“Because all you ever mentioned was testing! Training his powers this, checking his DNA that, like it wasn’t how he went out. That’s all he was to Trask, and that’s apparently all he was to you.” He still moved the pieces around, creating tiny attack patterns with the little knowledge he had about chess.

“You keep talking like you knew him personally. He visited a few times after you got drafted. Said your brother looked a lot like you. Not that you’d ever notice that.”

Alex was quiet for a long moment, taking measured sips of his drink. “I didn’t get drafted.”

“What?”

“I said,” He leaned in close to the other, eyes somewhere between lost and teary, “I fucking signed up on my own right. Thought that I took too many lives of the guys on the same side, so I could even my score by taking from the other. what do I come back to? My own damn side kills more people I cared about.” He slammed his drink onto the table spilling amber drops onto the chessboard, a few even hitting some of the white pieces.  Pietro brushed them away, hoping that none of it would stain. Could whiskey even stain wood?

“We stayed in touch while I was gone, wrote letters and everything.” Alex continued, seeming to sober up quickly. “But he wouldn’t have told you that, would he? He lived in Manhattan the entire time. Even had a daughter, Theresa. Maybe we made him too trusting of people in lab coats, maybe we didn’t. It would just be another name to add onto the growing list of people I’ve killed.”

“If this is all about Darwin again-” Hank tried to be the voice of reason, placing a tentatively calm hand on the other’s shoulder and moving the glass as far away from him as he could manage.

This was obviously the wrong choice of words, and Alex quickly shrugged off the other’s grasp while his hands shook wildly. “It’s not about Darwin, and for the last time, he’s not fucking dead!” And more quietly, “He’s not all of my problems, you know. I got the note that Sean disappeared one week before I was supposed to get sent off to Trask. Did you forget about that? I was going to be a lab rat, too. I remember someone in my squad always said the damnest thing, silver-hair sticky-fingers would know it.” A bitter laugh and he stood, walking over to the mantle of the fireplace. “ Every time we went into the field he’d shout ‘ _Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!_ ’ or some shit. He told me it was a call to arms or something, but all I could imagine was them finally finding out that I was a mutant.” He sat down again, appearing tired even though he’d walked maybe five feet. “And then they’d sick the dogs of war on poor Havok. And they did.”

The quiet seemed eternal, especially for Pietro, who focused on moving the pieces at twice the normal rate rather than look up and see the trainwreck waiting to happen. He swore he could hear the ice in the glass forgotten on the table crack and melt, but he attributed it to his imagination. He did the same to what he feared to be Alex crying.

And then a knight fell. One of the white-painted pieces clattered off the table and onto the wooden floor. The sound seemed to echo in the dead-silent space, and Pietro quickly scrambled to pick it up. What he imagined as Alex crying was gone, and it was almost as though the stares of the two could be heard. The miniature was quickly shoved into his jacket pocket, and he flashed out of the room, softly closing the door behind him.

He pretended not to hear two voices crying as he walked away.

  


* * *

_  
_

The next morning, breakfast was quiet, being that it was Saturday. Most kids would sleep until noon, but Pietro had never been much of one to sleep a second more than he had to.

He leaned on the counter in the kitchen, picking at some type of sugary cereal he had grabbed from the pantry. And then the two he had seen last night walked in.

Not at the same time, of course, Hank entered first, and Alex followed three or four minutes later. Both looked tired, wretchedly hung over, and at least one had the telltale red eyes of crying. Not to mention that one of them had a faint blue tint to their skin. They wordlessly began cooking, pulling skillets and plates from cabinets in the practiced organization of those who had to live together. They seemed void of their their usual banter or arguing, usually punctured with name calling or playful shoves. The only words trades were quiet pleas to pass ingredients mingled with glances to each other and back to the teen and his box of cereal.

Pietro knew his cue to leave, darting out of the kitchen with his breakfast.

He made sure to leave the whiskey-stained knight on the counter behind him.  


**Author's Note:**

> Part three is finished! Comments, suggestions, questions all welcome, either here or via [my tumblr](http://algebrasunshine.tumblr.com/ask/). I'd love to hear your thoughts on the content, as well as predictions for future installments.


End file.
